The Majority

A taste of nature, the smell of fear,
Your heart beating faster, footsteps you can here.
Your heart is pounding, your bearings are gone,
If you don't find the path back you know you won't last long.
There is something chasing you, you can feel it breathe,
Then it grabs you and you start to bleed.
You fight to escape, but it's to late,
The beast is upon you to seal your fate.
But then from above, you see the light,
Your confidence is restored and so is your fight.
Your life is spared and so is your soul,
For the first time in your life you feel whole.
But as time goes by you tend to forget,
And take for granite the salvation you were sent.
And once again you travel alone,
In a dark and lonesome world,
Without a light and without a home.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”